Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to techniques for developing topics of user interest.
Background
In a computer networking environment such as the Internet, users commonly use their computers to access computers (e.g., servers) containing resources of content providers on the “World Wide Web” (also known as “the Web”) to obtain various types of content (e.g., text, images, video). Users often begin their quests for content by using Web browser software on their computers to access content providers offering content search services. Search services are provided by search engines, which discover and index vast amounts of content available from millions of content providers in order to quickly (e.g., in a fraction of a second) direct users to content believed to be directed to topics of interest to users. Examples of such search engines include Yahoo! Search™ (at http://www.yahoo.com), Microsoft Bing™ (at http://www.bing.com), Google™ (at http://www.google.com), as well as personal search engines, intranet search engines, etc.
Conventionally, users identify topics of interest by manually entering, including cutting and pasting, search terms (e.g., words, phrases, quotes) into a query box of a search engine. User queries contain one or more words/terms, such as “hazardous waste” or “country music,” identifying one to many topics of interest. Search engines check received search terms against their content indexes and return a list of links to content deemed relevant to the query. In a Web-based search, the search engine typically returns a list of uniform resource locator (URL) addresses for the relevant documents, which is displayed to the user in a search results page. Users are able to browse and “consume” (e.g., view, read, listen to) the content by selecting or otherwise following the links to content. By consuming the content, users may be able to manually discover additional topics or sub-topics of interest. Users then refine their topics of interest by manually providing different or more detailed search terms, which often results in different links being returned by search engines.
There are numerous problems with this conventional method of manually searching for topics of interest, manually refining searches for topics of interest, and displaying and interacting with content pertaining to topics of interest. Among these problems are, first, both methods are manual, and slow. This slow procedure of iterative manual searches is exacerbated by slow network connections. Second, users are generally limited to searching for and reviewing returned links for one topic (represented by one set of search terms) per Web browser page. Users cannot manage a search for multiple topics or subtopics without a plurality of Web browser pages. Third, due to limited time, users may be unable to manually discover and refine their topics of interest. Fourth, when a webpage is gone, so too are the search topics of interest, which forces users to manually start over rather than pick up where they left off in their search for topics of interest.
Thus, systems, methods, and computer program products are needed that address one or more of the aforementioned shortcomings of conventional techniques for searching for topics of interest, refining topics of interest to obtain desired content and interacting with content pertaining to topics of interest.